The Gossip Bench

In my sixties coming-of-age novel A Daffodil for Angie there's a “gossip bench” or “telephone chair” in the hallway. It was a piece of furniture common to homes in the fifties and sixties that looked a bit like a school desk. There was a small table on one end where a rotary telephone sat. The other end was a chair. That’s where many a teenage girl or boy sat to talk to their latest heartthrob. Angie’s older sister, Deedee, spends hours doing just that – talking to her boyfriends and then callin...